Inconsistent quality and obnoxiously loud music make John Salt more of a miss
than a hit.

A Mr Robin Lane writes from Devizes on a point of perpetual vexation. “Dear Mr Norman,” he begins, with a pleasing formality absent at today’s restaurant, where “darling” was the preferred mode of address, “I very much enjoy your reviews.” A satisfied customer, to borrow once again from Basil Fawlty: we should have him stuffed.

“I would however like to ask,” he goes on, “whether you might be able to include in each piece whether or not the restaurant plays music as I, and many others, object to it.” Mr Lane, I take the point. So be assured that John Salt of Islington not only plays indie rock, but constantly, and at a volume that almost provoked an instant walkout.

“You’ll be eating downstairs tonight,” a waitress curtly announced when I reached the upstairs dining area, but so juddering was the bass beat blasting up from the bar that I succumbed to a mild outbreak of what is known in the trade, after my late and much-lamented friend Michael, as Winnerial Disease. After an arduous journey in a Tube carriage packed to asphyxiation point with Arsenal fans (yeuch, yeuch, and yea, thrice yeuch) en route to a night game, I wasn’t bleedin’ having it. “If you must stick people down there in that hideous racket,” I pompously bleated, “surely you should warn them when they ring to book?”

Eventually she capitulated, and with the caveat that we would eventually have to share it, led me to a table in what was less a room than a mezzanine space. Ferociously on-trend in the faux canteen/wartime drinking club style, the gaff is illuminated by bare bulbs over the bar, the furniture is determinedly plain, and showcases feature empty jars and kitchen implements.

When John Salt opened last year, it did so under a chef whose signature dish was a caramel-coated brick which diners were expected to lick. He swiftly departed, to be replaced by Neil Rankin, a barbecue specialist who, at the outstanding Pitt Cue Co, produced sensational pulled pork, ribs and other barbecue classics. Here, though the menu is as piggy as any I have seen, he is giving greater vent to his artistic side.

All three starters suggested a cook trying too hard to impress, and sacrificing flavour for novelty. Crab and fennel on pork skin, in which the crispy skin doubled as a makeshift spoon with which to scoop up the crab, was artful, clever and pretty, but peculiarly feckless. So was octopus with lardo (rosemary-cured pig fat). A medley of ham, egg and bacon dashi (a Japanese stock) looked gorgeous, with the soft-boiled egg perched on a ring of ham and garnished with egg-white shavings: aesthetically, at least, it packed more of a punch than the others.

The contrast in presentation and flavour between the starters and the main courses that succeeded them suggested that, in the moment it took another waitress to deliver our plates with a cheery, “There you go, darling!”, we had slipped through a culinary wormhole and been transported from the outskirts of Michelinland to a Louisiana truck stop. “This is much more like it,” said my friend of a pork hash in which chunks of sweet belly mingled with sweetcorn, new potatoes, apple and black pudding. Equally impressive was green chilli poussin, which benefited from a weirdly brilliant Sino-American flavour combination of star anise and mesquite.

While Rankin unquestionably has talent, his inconsistency showed itself again in the side dishes. Cardboardy fries had been involved in an intercontinental motorway pile-up – aptly so, John Salt being an artist who specialises in super-realist paintings of car wrecks – with Monterey Jack cheese, kimchi and pulled pork. A “grilled salad” of kale and lettuce “has left a coating of grease on my tongue like a Little Chef omelette”, said my co-Saltee. “Dreadful. That is not a dish; that’s an ordeal.”

As for the puddings – a synthetic-tasting arrangement of blood orange and buttermilk in a martini glass, and hot banana in a coating of biscuit, caramel and sesame seeds – these, like the starters, were more a pleasure to the eye than the palate.

By now we had been joined by a couple of twentysomething teachers from Hackney, which presented an etiquette conundrum. We resolved it over coffee, deciding to ruin their evening by engaging them in chat. Although closer to John Salt’s target demographic than us old boilers, they were unimpressed.

“We’ve been here an hour,” they said, “and only had the starters. We had heard great things, but it all seems a bit emperor’s new clothes.” Despite those main courses, we felt much the same.

As for the music, here our co-diners offered a handy hint for my correspondent from Wiltshire. Mr Lane, retrain as a primary schoolteacher. Apparently, if you spend all day with 30 seven year-olds, piped music in restaurants loses its power to irritate.

I’d like to finish by assuring readers of a nervous disposition that Mr Lane is to be spared the taxidermist’s vorpal sword, only to win a forthcoming lunch as my guest, in accordance with our pilot scheme to encourage good behaviour from the readership. Something to think on, there.

John Salt, 131 Upper Street, London N1 1QP (020 7359 7501). Three courses with beer/wine and coffee: £35-£40 per head